Cannot reset default apps

Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.

--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 10/11/2019 02:37, Ken Springer wrote:


Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.



Please repost your question without treating Microsoft with contempt.
It's your stupidity and low intelligence that's a problem here, NOT
Microsoft.






--
With over 1,000,000 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On 11/9/19 8:43 PM, 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:
On 10/11/2019 02:37, Ken Springer wrote:


Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.



Please repost your question without treating Microsoft with contempt.
It's your stupidity and low intelligence that's a problem here, NOT
Microsoft.

And I see you've taken yours to a record low level. Have you gotten out
of kindergarten summer school yet?


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI.Â* Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.


Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.


Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix


This (manual fix) seems to align with the script on that
Github item.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com...10itprogeneral

Someone mentions that this "feature" may belong to "tablet mode".

It's possible the Lenovo laptop is a dual-feature device,
has a touchscreen, and this makes it a candidate for
a tablet mode of operation.

What I'm fishing around for, is whether some part of the
platform, is going to give a "hint" causing the registration
to continue to be screwed up.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/352305/ho...in-tablet-mode

*******

There's an Apps troubleshooter in the Troubleshooter in
Control Panels. You could "get the opinion of the Troubleshooter first",
and see if it recognizes the problem.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-r...ter-windows-10

Paul

Ken Springer wrote:

Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.

Windows 10
- Open the Windows 10 Feedback Hub from the Start menu, or enter
´Feedback Hub¡ into the search field in the taskbar.
- Click ´Report a Bug¡.
- Follow the instructions to send in your issue.

If users don't report bugs to Microsoft (connect.microsoft.com stopped
functioning back in Jan 2018), Microsoft won't know about them. Hoping
wherever else you cite a bug has people there that know people at
Microsoft that can open a bug ticket doesn't work well, or not at all.

TwinUI = Tablet Windows User Interface
It's a library (of functions). While there are many copies of
twinui.dll found in various folders, the copies of importance are at:

C:\Windows\System32\twinui.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\twinui.dll

Looks to be an app launcher.

I found out about Microsoft's app launchers by accident. While you
might set a web browser to be the default one, Windows actually uses
"Internet Browser" to decide. Somehow when presented with the choice of
what to make the default web browser (which was a popup, as I recall), I
didn't know what the hell was "Internet Browser". Sounded like some
knockoff variant, like Comodo's Dragon, or one of the numerous variants
of Edge, IE, Chrome, or Firefox. So, of course, I picked Chrome (that
was what I was using at the time). What happened thereafter when I
double-clicked on a .url shortcut was that Chrome would load but instead
of rendering the retrieved web page would show it as code, like a text
editor. Go to the Defaults Apps wizard, scroll to the bottom, and click
on "Choose default apps by file type". Scroll all the way down to the
..url filetype. You'll see "Internet Browser" is the handler for the
..url filetype. Since it got changed to Chrome (which would display the
content of a web page instead of render it), I had to change this
filetype association back to Internet Browser. Apparently the Internet
Browser is used to decide which default web client into which the .url
gets passed as an argument. It's like a front switchboard directing the
URL string to whichever is the currently defined default web browser.
Without this, the .url string doesn't get passed as a hyperlink, but
instead the web browser is told to display the web page at that URL
(rather than render it). You can, for example, open .txt files in a web
browser to view them there instead of, say, Notepad. I'm glad that I
tried double-clicking on a .url shortcut soon after the prompt asking
which web browser to make the default, so I remembered about making that
choice (and not knowing what the **** was "Internet Browser", which I
probably saw as "Internet Explorer"). If you run "assoc .url" in a
command shell, you'll see that filetype is associated with
InternetShortcut, not with the executable file (for a web browser).

https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/what-is-twinui.html

Looks like TWinUI is similar, acting as a frontend to decide how to
launch an app. That it shows as a default app means there is no longer
a default shown. Users report that they cannot change the default app
by going into the Default Apps wizard. However, I suspect they don't
scroll all the way down to the bottom to look at the other methods of
defining default apps by filetype or by protocol. That's what I
discovered was needed to get back to using Internet Browser as the
default handler for .url filetypes (to get the selected web browser to
render the document) instead of pointing at a web browser's executable
file (which merely loaded the document in the web browser, like using
Notepad to view the source of a web page).

See if the following works:
- In the taskbar's searchbox, enter "default apps".
- Open the Default Apps wizard.
- Choose default apps by filetype.
- Scroll down until you find the filetype (e.g., jpg, url, doc) to which
you want to assign a handler (the default app).
- Click on the current choice for a handler (or "Choose a default"), and
pick the handler you want for that filetype from the popup list. Only
apps that have previously registered themselves for what filetypes
they can handle will be listed.

Alternatively, you were likely trying to open a file or whatever a
shortcut was pointing at when you double-clicked on it. Instead,
right-click on the file (in File Explorer) and, from the context menu,
choose "Open with" and then specify the executable file for the handler
in which you want to load that file. If the Open With context menu
entry doesn't show your handler in its recent list, you'll have to
browse to the handler (used to be called Browse, now called Choose
Another App).

That the default apps got set to TwinUI likely means some registry
corruption regarding the filetype associations, or you selected
something you shouldn't in a popup prompt asking you to select a
default, or you used a tweaker (that caused the corruption), or by
malware. I made the association mistake for one filetype (.url). If
all default apps are pointing to TwinUI, that wouldn't be from you
making a selection for one filetype. TwinUI shows up when the filetype
or protocol associations somehow got screwed up, so Windows points to
the app launcher.

One suggestion is to restore the registry from before the corruption
happened, but users may not know about the corruption until long after
it occurred, and most don't schedule periodic backups of their registry.
If you schedule periodic image backups of the file system, you can use
those for a recovery, as they should include the registry files. Alas,
most users don't do backups at all, plus restoring to a backup image
means losing all wanted changes created after that backup.

All the Powershell script does (mentioned in Paul's reply) from the
Github site is to re-register all the apps, but not for programs.
Registering an app has its filetype associations defined (those that are
defined in the package's manifest for the app). Well, you can do that,
too, as described above. The script only takes care of the filetype
associations for the installed UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps
which are those coded using WinRT (Windows Runtime) instead of using the
Win32 APIs. The apps get re-registered using the script, but not the
filetypes associated to Win32 programs that you installed (which usually
use MSI to install). So, even after using the script (which merely
makes easier to re-associate filetypes than the manual method above), I
don't see that it will help to re-register filetype associations for the
Win32 programs that you installed.

For example, you could install VideoLAN's VLC media player either as a
Win32 program (the old way) or as an UWP app. Personally I would stick
with the Win32 version. If you installed VLC as an app, there will be a
package saved in Windows, so the script will re-register the app which
consequently also re-registers all its filetype associations (well, the
default filetype association since the program may list all filetypes
and let you choose). If you installed the Win32 VLC player, there will
no package to run through the script. Win32 installers will register
what filetypes the program handles, that that's just to specify which it
handles, not that it will be the default handler for those filetypes
(although often that is the assumption made by the installer
programmer). In the registry, a filetype can have multiple handlers
defined, because multiple installed programs can handle the same
filetype, like you installed VLC, Irfanview, Paint.Net, and so on. A
default might be selected in that filetype definition in the registry,
but it's not required when a program or app adds its list of supported
filetypes to the registry. For example:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg\OpenWithProgids

will likely have multiple data items with each pointing to a handler
that declared it could handle that filetype.

In article ,
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.

Then you should not be trying to use W10, the joke OS.
Seriously, this is what W10 is. If you're not the kind of guy who is "in
the mood" to deal with it, then you need to look elsewhere.

The more I see and hear of W10, the more I think it has become like Linux.
That is, all the bad parts of Linux (*), with none of the good parts.
I.e., it obviously, has none of the power and flexibility that makes Linux
so wnoderful (once you get used to it), but it has all the "What you get is
what you get" aspects.

I've never been a big fan of MS products, but Windows did used to have a
soul - that is, an actual concern that it be usable - that is, a sense that
we're in this together and we want you to enjoy using it. That is, it was
never great - from a power user POV - but it was crafted with care to be
usable. That is now gone.

(*) As mentioned, the "freeware mentality" - which is to say, the
"What you get is what you get" mentality.

--
"The most unsettling aspect of my atheism for Christians is
when they realize that their Bible has no power to make me
wince. They are used to using it like a cattle prod to get
people to cower into compliance." - Author unknown

On 11/9/19 9:36 PM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI.Â* Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.


Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix

Thanks, but that didn't work. :-(

I did get a message about chaning the settings of some policy, but sadly
I can't remember the name of the policy to set it back.

After changing the policy in the Powershell window, some message in red
text displayed for about a quarter of a second, and the window closed.
No idea what it said.


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 11/9/19 10:53 PM, Paul wrote:
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.


Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix


This (manual fix) seems to align with the script on that
Github item.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com...10itprogeneral

Fix #1 didn't work, although the class was not registered.

I just love articles like this that end the instructions to reboot and
all is well. And then... It's not.

Fix #2 does not apply, AFAIK, as I haven't had any issue with Explorer/Edge.

From the comments, it sounds like the solutions didn't work for a lot
of people.

Someone mentions that this "feature" may belong to "tablet mode".

FWIW, tablet mode is off.

This is a refurbished unit that came with W7 Pro. I used the Media
Creation Tool, and did a fresh install, not an upgrade.

It's possible the Lenovo laptop is a dual-feature device,
has a touchscreen, and this makes it a candidate for
a tablet mode of operation.

No touchscreen.

What I'm fishing around for, is whether some part of the
platform, is going to give a "hint" causing the registration
to continue to be screwed up.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/352305/ho...in-tablet-mode

*******

There's an Apps troubleshooter in the Troubleshooter in
Control Panels. You could "get the opinion of the Troubleshooter first",
and see if it recognizes the problem.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-r...ter-windows-10

So, I run the troubleshooter as shown in the article. I get part way
through, and the troubleshooter wants me to sign in with an MS account.
It doesn't tell you what you are signing into. I don't want MS to have
any more access to my computer than needed, so I set things up for local
accounts.

So, I went past this step, and at the end, there were a couple of things
it couldn't fix.

After thinking on the situation for awhile, I wondered if simply signing
in to the MS Store would make any difference in the trouble shooter.
So I signed in, and there were 11 app updates available. Say what?!?!?!
Why aren't these MS apps updated with the regular update system?

Well, while I'm in the store, may as well update the programs.

After that finished, I figured I also may as well reboot. Logged into
one account after rebooting, the word "Welome" displayed for longer than
it had in the past.

But now, I can change those W#$^&#^&W# default apps. Who'd a thunk it?
What I don't know is, did Fix #1 above have any effect here?

So, now I wonder, if the user account is an MS account, would the apps
be automatically updated?


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 11/10/19 1:06 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.

Windows 10
- Open the Windows 10 Feedback Hub from the Start menu, or enter
“Feedback Hub� into the search field in the taskbar.
- Click “Report a Bug�.
- Follow the instructions to send in your issue.

If users don't report bugs to Microsoft (connect.microsoft.com stopped
functioning back in Jan 2018), Microsoft won't know about them. Hoping
wherever else you cite a bug has people there that know people at
Microsoft that can open a bug ticket doesn't work well, or not at all.

I did this, although it's not a standard practice for me. I don't
regularly use Windows Anything, preferring my Mac which is far less of a
problem.

TwinUI = Tablet Windows User Interface
It's a library (of functions). While there are many copies of
twinui.dll found in various folders, the copies of importance are at:

C:\Windows\System32\twinui.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\twinui.dll

Looks to be an app launcher.

This kind of makes sense to me. When I would insert a CD or DVD into
the optical drive, W10 gave me the notification of "What do you want to
do...", When I clicked on the notification, one of the options was to
run starterfile.html or something like that. Which did not seem to run,
but I may have given up on that too soon.

I found out about Microsoft's app launchers by accident. While you
might set a web browser to be the default one, Windows actually uses
"Internet Browser" to decide. Somehow when presented with the choice of
what to make the default web browser (which was a popup, as I recall), I
didn't know what the hell was "Internet Browser". Sounded like some
knockoff variant, like Comodo's Dragon, or one of the numerous variants
of Edge, IE, Chrome, or Firefox. So, of course, I picked Chrome (that
was what I was using at the time). What happened thereafter when I
double-clicked on a .url shortcut was that Chrome would load but instead
of rendering the retrieved web page would show it as code, like a text
editor. Go to the Defaults Apps wizard, scroll to the bottom, and click
on "Choose default apps by file type". Scroll all the way down to the
.url filetype. You'll see "Internet Browser" is the handler for the
.url filetype. Since it got changed to Chrome (which would display the
content of a web page instead of render it), I had to change this
filetype association back to Internet Browser. Apparently the Internet
Browser is used to decide which default web client into which the .url
gets passed as an argument. It's like a front switchboard directing the
URL string to whichever is the currently defined default web browser.
Without this, the .url string doesn't get passed as a hyperlink, but
instead the web browser is told to display the web page at that URL
(rather than render it). You can, for example, open .txt files in a web
browser to view them there instead of, say, Notepad. I'm glad that I
tried double-clicking on a .url shortcut soon after the prompt asking
which web browser to make the default, so I remembered about making that
choice (and not knowing what the **** was "Internet Browser", which I
probably saw as "Internet Explorer"). If you run "assoc .url" in a
command shell, you'll see that filetype is associated with
InternetShortcut, not with the executable file (for a web browser).

https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/what-is-twinui.html

Looks like TWinUI is similar, acting as a frontend to decide how to
launch an app. That it shows as a default app means there is no longer
a default shown. Users report that they cannot change the default app
by going into the Default Apps wizard.

Precisely what was happening here. What I didn't mention in my reply to
Paul, was that the wizard would crash during the process.

However, I suspect they don't
scroll all the way down to the bottom to look at the other methods of
defining default apps by filetype or by protocol.

Even if they do, after clicking on the options they'll see a list that
will just bedazzle and confuse them, and they'll just back out.

I think most users just want to pick a program and have it work in all
appropriate cases.

That's what I
discovered was needed to get back to using Internet Browser as the
default handler for .url filetypes (to get the selected web browser to
render the document) instead of pointing at a web browser's executable
file (which merely loaded the document in the web browser, like using
Notepad to view the source of a web page).

See if the following works:
- In the taskbar's searchbox, enter "default apps".
- Open the Default Apps wizard.
- Choose default apps by filetype.
- Scroll down until you find the filetype (e.g., jpg, url, doc) to which
you want to assign a handler (the default app).
- Click on the current choice for a handler (or "Choose a default"), and
pick the handler you want for that filetype from the popup list. Only
apps that have previously registered themselves for what filetypes
they can handle will be listed.

If you've read my reply to Paul, updating the Store has seemingly solved
the issue.

Alternatively, you were likely trying to open a file or whatever a
shortcut was pointing at when you double-clicked on it. Instead,
right-click on the file (in File Explorer) and, from the context menu,
choose "Open with" and then specify the executable file for the handler
in which you want to load that file. If the Open With context menu
entry doesn't show your handler in its recent list, you'll have to
browse to the handler (used to be called Browse, now called Choose
Another App).

Open With worked, but contrary to one internet link I followed, I still
could not make that the default program.

That the default apps got set to TwinUI likely means some registry
corruption regarding the filetype associations, or you selected
something you shouldn't in a popup prompt asking you to select a
default, or you used a tweaker (that caused the corruption), or by
malware. I made the association mistake for one filetype (.url). If
all default apps are pointing to TwinUI, that wouldn't be from you
making a selection for one filetype. TwinUI shows up when the filetype
or protocol associations somehow got screwed up, so Windows points to
the app launcher.

If it is, or now was, some type of registry corruption, it was done at
the time W10 was installed.

One suggestion is to restore the registry from before the corruption
happened, but users may not know about the corruption until long after
it occurred, and most don't schedule periodic backups of their registry.
If you schedule periodic image backups of the file system, you can use
those for a recovery, as they should include the registry files. Alas,
most users don't do backups at all, plus restoring to a backup image
means losing all wanted changes created after that backup.

"No backups at all." That is so true.

snip


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Springer wrote:
On 11/9/19 10:53 PM, Paul wrote:
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.

Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called
TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong.

I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent.

Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS.

As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in
the mood to deal with it.


Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix


This (manual fix) seems to align with the script on that
Github item.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com...10itprogeneral


Fix #1 didn't work, although the class was not registered.

I just love articles like this that end the instructions to reboot and
all is well. And then... It's not.

Fix #2 does not apply, AFAIK, as I haven't had any issue with
Explorer/Edge.

From the comments, it sounds like the solutions didn't work for a lot
of people.

Someone mentions that this "feature" may belong to "tablet mode".

FWIW, tablet mode is off.

This is a refurbished unit that came with W7 Pro. I used the Media
Creation Tool, and did a fresh install, not an upgrade.

It's possible the Lenovo laptop is a dual-feature device,
has a touchscreen, and this makes it a candidate for
a tablet mode of operation.

No touchscreen.

What I'm fishing around for, is whether some part of the
platform, is going to give a "hint" causing the registration
to continue to be screwed up.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/352305/ho...in-tablet-mode

*******

There's an Apps troubleshooter in the Troubleshooter in
Control Panels. You could "get the opinion of the Troubleshooter first",
and see if it recognizes the problem.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-r...ter-windows-10


So, I run the troubleshooter as shown in the article. I get part way
through, and the troubleshooter wants me to sign in with an MS account.
It doesn't tell you what you are signing into. I don't want MS to have
any more access to my computer than needed, so I set things up for local
accounts.

So, I went past this step, and at the end, there were a couple of things
it couldn't fix.

After thinking on the situation for awhile, I wondered if simply signing
in to the MS Store would make any difference in the trouble shooter. So
I signed in, and there were 11 app updates available. Say what?!?!?!
Why aren't these MS apps updated with the regular update system?

Well, while I'm in the store, may as well update the programs.

After that finished, I figured I also may as well reboot. Logged into
one account after rebooting, the word "Welome" displayed for longer than
it had in the past.

But now, I can change those W#$^&#^&W# default apps. Who'd a thunk it?
What I don't know is, did Fix #1 above have any effect here?

So, now I wonder, if the user account is an MS account, would the apps
be automatically updated?

With regard to your last sentence, yes they would.

It seems hard to believe the account would prevent
Fix #1 from finishing, but perhaps re-downloading the
App in that script, is part of the fix. You would think
a dialog would pop up if it needed authentication.

On the Insider, I have one Insider install where
it would say stuff like "there is a problem with your
account", and what it really meant was "I'd like you
to authenticate now please", as that's all it would
take to make it shut up.

Paul

On 11/10/19 9:12 AM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 11/9/19 10:53 PM, Paul wrote:
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

snip)

So, now I wonder, if the user account is an MS account, would the apps
be automatically updated?

With regard to your last sentence, yes they would.

Sounds like a very sneaky way to force you to use an MS account for your
login.

Personally, not impressed with MS's ethics, here, but it is MS.

snip


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"